University students’ conceptions of the good teacher: A Hong Kong perspective

One way that universities assess teaching effectiveness is by eliciting student feedback. However, what standards do students themselves use to judge whether a lecturer is a ‘good’ teacher? As part of a study carried out at a Hong Kong university, students were interviewed about their first-year learning experience and asked what they felt constituted ‘good’ and “bad’ teaching. Unlike when asked to complete teacher effectiveness surveys, no criteria or characteristics were given. Responses focused primarily on teaching skills that supported student learning and encouraged critical thinking, particularly the teacher’s ability to give clear explanations supported by relevant, practical examples.     

浅议如何做好高职院校班主任工作

在高校,特别是高职院校,班主任工作的好与坏直接影响到学生的成长和成材.笔者联系几年来的班主任工作实际,认为做好高职院校班主任工作应从以下几方面入手:一是开好主题班会,燃起师生之间信任之火;二是从教师形象、师生关系民主化和学生间的相互关系入手,创设良好的人际氛围;三是鼓励和牵动家长来协助工作.     

Improving higher education practice through student evaluation systems: is the student voice being heard?

Many higher education institutions use student evaluation systems as a way of highlighting course and lecturer strengths and areas for improvement. Globally, the student voice has been increasing in volume, and capitalising on student feedback has been proposed as a means to benefit teacher professional development. This paper examines the student evaluations at a university in Trinidad and Tobago in an effort to determine whether the student voice is being heard. The research focused on students’ responses to the question, ‘How do you think this course could be improved?’ Student evaluations were gathered from five purposefully selected courses taught at the university during 2011–2012 and then again one year later, in 2012–2013. This allowed for an analysis of the selected courses. Whilst the literature suggested that student evaluation systems are a valuable aid to lecturer improvement, this research found little evidence that these evaluations actually led to any real significant changes in lecturers’ practice.     

The Cultivation of Students' Speaking Ability

<正>In general,Chinese high school students have been weak in communicating in English.They are too shy to speak in public.So they can’t speak English fluently.That’s a great problem.In class,we should improve students’abilities while learning English,such as listening ability,speaking ability,reading ability,writing ability and translating ability.But I think that students’speaking ability is the most important one in the five abilities.So how can we improve students’speaking ability?     

培养文化敏感型教师:多元文化教师教育的议题与挑战——美国哥伦比亚大学师范学院A.Lin.Goodwin教授访谈

学校中儿童的日益多样化,使得教师教育必须帮助新教师理解如何与各种文化背景的学生打交道。教师不能想当然地假设每一个孩子都有相似的经历和体验,而要对学生的差异性保持清醒的意识和文化的敏感。多元文化教育更大的使命,是要确保教育实践的公平性,履行教育助推社会公正的使命。因此,为社会公正培养"文化敏感型教师",成为多元文化教育的核心议题。文化敏感型教师尽最大努力确保所有学生学业成功,帮助学生发展批判和质疑精神,培养学生改变社会的意识和能力。文化敏感型教师的概念使我们超越了对多元文化教师教育的肤浅定义,将多元文化教师教育指向这样的方向:教育是具有政治意义的活动,是每一个孩子都应该获得的权利。多元文化教师教育并非是让学生了解某个或某些少数民族那么简单,而是要培养师范生对个体差异性进行持续探究的能力。     

Self-directed learning characteristics: making learning personal,empowering and successful

Due to the speedy emergent investigation in self-directed learning (SDL) over the past 40 years, SDL is an education technique used progressively within tertiary institutions. SDL can be well-defined in terms of the amount of accountability the student accepts for his or her own learning. The self-directed students regarding learning take control and apply self-determination to learn what they view as imperative for themselves. The amount of control the students are keen to take over their own learning will depend on their assertiveness, aptitudes and personality characteristics. The article thus explores what individual features and characteristics can define the student who is involved in SDL; What capabilities and characteristics need to be grasped by the students who are involved in SDL? Therefore, the objective of the article was to identify characteristics of the self-directed learner in the context of teacher education. Based on our conclusion, it is clear that teacher-students should challenge themselves within this process of SDL development to participate in SDL opportunities. The characteristics of SDL teacher-students must be strengthened to promote their self-directedness with regard to learning and it is also the lecturer’s task to create a class atmosphere of SDl to inculcate and develop SDL characteristics in students.     

中学主题班队活动的设计和有效实施之我见

主题班队活动是学校德育工作的主要阵地。要积极发挥主题班队活动的育人功能,班主任首先要正确选择与确定班队活动主题,并按照自主性、渗透性原则实施活动各个环节。主题班队活动结束后,要根据标准做好评价工作。主题班队活动的成效与班主任的素质有很大的关联,班主任应确立坚定的政治信念、辩证的思维观、时代特征的价值观念和渊博的知识。     

中学英语教学中如何转化差生

许多学生学习英语有困难,他们被称为差生.如何转化差生?这是许多老师探讨的问题.我紧紧抓住两个方面一是理解差生心理状况,培养师生感情,激发他们的学习积极性;二是根据英语特点,采取科学方法,比如视听结合法.     

Toleration and Recognition: What should we teach?

Generally we think it good to tolerate and to accord recognition. Yet both are complex phenomena and our teaching must acknowledge and cope with that complexity. We tolerate only what we object to, so our message to students cannot be simply, 'promote the good and prevent the bad'. Much advocacy of toleration is not what it pretends to be. Nor is it entirely clear what sort of conduct should count as intolerant. Sometimes people are at fault for tolerating what they should not, or for tolerating what they should find unexceptionable. So virtue does not always lie with toleration. Tolerance can also seem condescending; should we therefore replace it with recognition? But recognition may not be able to coexist with the disapproval that makes toleration necessary. However, not everything about toleration and recognition is controversial; there are fixed points from which students can grapple with the issues presented by both.     

例谈中考阅读理解中的思维品质培养

英语教学和英语测试与评价是教学过程中密不可分的两个部分。有教学的地方就会有测试和评价。中考作为义务教育阶段的终结性考试,对日常教学无疑起到了指导和反拨作用。同时,英语学科的核心素养之一思维品质的培养与语言学习的方法存在着密切的关系,高效的语言学习能够促进思维品质培养的发展,思维品质培养也影响着语言学习的有效性。因此,作者结合一节中考阅读理解的复习指导课,谈一谈教师如何充分利用中考阅读理解中的文本,通过解读中考阅读文本,明确思维训练重点,设计富含思维内涵的活动,将复习备考和思维品质培养进行有效结合的一些做法和思考。     

Critically Teaching Criticality?: Modeling Social and Pedagogical Inquiry with Literary Texts

Within US teacher preparation programs, critical pedagogy and a desire for social change can lead teacher educators to prioritize transformation of prospective teachers’ beliefs through self-reflection. In pursuit of effective critical pedagogies, teacher educators also need to examine their own practices and beliefs. This self-study, a manifestation of teaching as inquiry, reframes evaluations of teaching away from what students do toward what teachers do. Here I undertake a reflexive examination of my own recursive practice as a teacher educator in children’s literature. Drawing upon a complex notion of teaching and learning, I argue that student learning outcomes are unpredictable, and as a result, successful teacher education should model self-inquiry as a vital part of teaching. Findings show that teaching choices (and omissions) in response to students’ responses led to unintended outcomes that undermined my motivations. I conclude that teacher educators’ self-inquiry and reflection in broader social contexts offers access to critical ways of thinking that underlie their work toward developing similar capacities among their prospective teacher students.     

Science education in a secular age

A college science education instructor tells his students he rejects evolution. What should we think? The scene unfolds in one of the largest urban centers in the world. If we are surprised, why? Expanding on Federica Raia’s (2012) first-hand experience with this scenario, I broaden her discussion by considering the complexity of science education in a secular age. Enjoining Raia within the framework of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I task the science education community to consider the broad strokes of science, religious faith, and the complexity of modernity in its evolving, hybridized forms. Building upon anthropological approaches to science education research, I articulate a framework to more fully account for who, globally, is a Creationist, and what this means for our views of ethically responsive science education.     

历史教学的问题与出路

历史教学的问题主要有两个方面,其一是历史系学生对所学专业缺乏兴趣,多数学生并不是主动选择历史系;其二是历史教学是教师一言堂,学生过于被动,没有得到应有的锻炼与成长。为了吸引学生,历史教师应首先培养学生的历史情结,引领学生走进历史殿堂。为了培养出真正的人才,历史教学应突出学生的主体地位,通过读书和讨论培养学生独立学习、独立思考能力。     

巧思妙想,让写作文成为乐趣

学生作文,历来是教师觉得不知道如何教,习作者不知道如何写的苦差事。作为教师,在面临困难时,应学会直面挑战,切实迎合新时代倡导的要“敢于创新,勇于开拓”的要求。教学实践告诉笔者,作文教学应巧用方法,立足于学生本身,带领学生在探究中学作文,联系生活写作文,结合教师评语改作文。     

Oral Presentation——Opportunity or Suffering

This paper is about a reflective practice happened in the author’ s College English teaching.Since 2005,a 5-minute oral-presentation was required for all the students in turn,in order to raise opportunities for them to practice oral English.But the students’ responses were always disappointing since they only took the task as a burden.After the teacher lift the limits on presentation time,form,sequence,partner,etc.,better learning outcomes were achieved.When reflecting on this change,Biggs’3P Models of "constructive alignment" is taken into account.Any teaching and learning activity (TLA) cannot put the students’ and the teacher’ s presage aside since the students’ ability,interests,motivation as well as the teacher’ s objective,assessment approach and so on are co-determinants of a successful TLA.Further suggestions are given based on this reflection at the end of the paper.     

Evaluating the effect of a lecturer’s language background on a student rating of teaching form

This study, using student ratings of lecturers, examines the perceived effect of the lecturer’s ability to communicate effectively. The relationship between the standard question—’The lecturer was able to communicate ideas and information clearly’—and the global rating question—’Overall, the lecturer is an effective teacher’—was investigated in 7072 undergraduate standard teaching surveys from one university, using the lecturer’s language background as a factor. The results show that overall student ratings of English as a second language (ESL) lecturers are, on average, 0.4 points lower on a five‐point scale than student ratings of native English speaking lecturers. There is a strong interaction between this average difference and the lecturer’s faculty, with little difference in arts (humanities and social sciences) through to 0.6 points difference in science. The study also found that, of the four categorical questions used in the university’s standard teaching survey, the ‘communication’ question had the highest correlation with the ‘overall’ question. The correlation (R?=?0.96) suggests that the standard teaching survey is overly influenced by the students’ perception of this one aspect of teaching—reflecting a transmission model. The rating difference between ESL and native English speaking lecturers is briefly explored. In addition, the paper briefly considers the implications of the above findings for teacher development and for student expectations against a background of a growing ESL student population.     

Beginning Again: A Response to Rosen and Christie

Genre theory has been around for a long time now. The exchange between Michael Rosen and Frances Christie recently featured in Changing English is the latest in a series of exchanges between advocates of genre and their critics over the past three decades or so. Our aim in this response-essay is not to weigh up the merits of the cases made by Rosen and Christie. Rather, we want to think about how individual teachers might confront the hegemony of genre theory and the harmful effects we believe it is having on language education. Our starting point is Lisa’s own professional practice, as she enacts it from day to day at a state secondary school in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, one of the most ethnically diverse regions in Australia. We draw on Lisa’s journal to construct a sense of the time and place, as well as samples of students’ writing that she gathered in the course of a year with her Year 7 class, in order to gain a better understanding of her work as an English teacher. How does this material compare with ‘all the genre work done over some 25–30?years’ by the genre theorists? What ‘knowledge’ will she be able to construct on the basis of the classroom observations that she made over that time? What should we make of the fact that her world is not the same as the world as genre theorists conceive it?     

让探究之花在科学课堂绽放——如何切实有效地在小学科学课中进行探究式学习

培养学生的“科学素养”是时代发展对未来人才素质的需要．探索如何切实有效地在小学科学课中进行探究式学习,是深化课程改革的重要课题。在课堂中,教师要为学生提供探究的条件和教给学生探究方法;要让学生多动眼“看一看”,多动脑“想一想”,多动口“说一说”,多动手“做一做”,让学生勇于探究、敢于探究、善于探究、乐于探究、勤于探究,让探究之花在科学课堂美丽绽放。     

哲学解释学视域下的教师权威探析

哲学解释学视域下要求构建民主、平等、对话、理解的新型师生关系,在这种新型师生关系的关照下,教师权威是否还有其存在的空间?对这一问题的探讨可以为教师权威转型提供有价值的参考。文章从教师权威的内容入手,继而探析了新型师生关系对教师权威造成了哪些冲击,哪些权威应该被消解,哪些权威应该被重构等问题,在此基础上对如何在新型师生关系中调整教师权威给予了一些建议。     

新建本科院校英语专业独立语法课教学现状调查与分析——以铜仁学院为例

对新建本科院校英语专业二年级学生进行了问卷调查和访谈,旨在了解该类学校英语专业独立语法课的教学现状。调查结果表明:96%的学生认为语法教学很重要,对语法教学有着很大的需求;一半以上的学生缺乏对显性语法知识的了解和对语法能力的运用;90%的学生认为语法课时不够;87%的学生希望用英汉结合(主要是汉语)授课;学生获取语法知识的渠道单一;学生的自主学习性不强;教师的教学方法、教学能力以及责任感对学生语法的兴趣取向有着很大的影响。